Professor of political science at the European University in St. Petersburg, Russia. He is the author of 17 books and more than 120 articles on Russian and post Soviet politics.

A recent article in the Financial
Times (reprinted by the Russian newspaper Vedomosti) paints a hypothetical
picture of the world in 2012. Sarah
Palin has been elected US president, Nicolas Sarkozy marries Madonna, and
Dmitry Medvedev resigns as president of Russia, handing over the reins of power
to his predecessor. Shortly afterwards
he is arrested.

Sometimes, such predictions do have the power
of self-fulfilling prophecies. But it would not be out of place to propose a
different possible scenario for our country.

It goes like this: in the summer of 2009, faced
with popular dissatisfaction with government policies, President Medvedev
announced that he was reforming Russia's political system. He dismissed the
cabinet of Vladimir Putin, appointed Igor Shuvalov acting head of the
government, then announced the dissolution of the State Duma and regional
legislatures. In the autumn of 2009 free and fair elections were held in Russia:
all parties and candidates were able to participate, and the campaigns and vote
counting were transparent. The political parties that won formed a new federal
and regional government. The effective appointment of governors was abolished.

Not even the most fervent members of Russia's opposition
have imagined such changes to the political landscape, it would seem.

Now let's see what happens if we replace the
word "Russia" with the name of any modern democracy, (even if it doesn't have
the strongest institutions), and the names of Russian leaders with the names of
political figures in the said country. The scenario looks quite trite. One need
not be a serious pundit to see that there is a high chance of this actually
happening in a number of European countries, including our formerly socialist
neighbours.

The main difference between the way democratic
and authoritarian regimes react to a crisis seems to be in the political sphere,
rather than the economic. Democracies change more quickly than usual during
crises. New governments and prime ministers come to power (sometimes very
suddenly, as in Iceland). Those who
disagree with the government's policies take to the streets of Paris, Riga and
Vilnius. There are heated discussions in the press and an increasing number of
scandalous revelations and subsequent resignations.

Authoritarian states, by contrast, react to
crises by trying to preserve the status
quo at any cost and to prevent changes which threaten not just to replace
the people in power, but to undermine the regime itself. Willingness to change is
no guarantee of a more successful solution of economic problems than rejecting
any changes whatsoever. But preserving the political system unchanged does sow the
seeds of instability. Analyses of the
economic aspects of the crisis tend to underestimate this.

In recent weeks politically concerned Russians
have seen hitherto unprecedented levels of activity by Dmitry Medvedev, who had
until then remained in his predecessor's shadow. The heads of a number of
regions were dismissed and the President addressed the nation on television,
admitting that the crisis would be severe and prolonged.

He has made overtures towards liberals too. He met Mikhail
Gorbachev, former President of the USSR, and the editor of Novaya Gazeta. He
also included a number of prominent human rights advocates in one of his recent
council meetings. Lastly, he published
the list of the one hundred candidates in the "golden
hundred" talent pool that will be available to him in future appointments. These developments are all portrayed as moves
by the government towards greater openness and transparency.

However, none of this affects the Kremlin's core
political and economic monopoly. Indeed,
it only serves to support it, as a kind of adjustment on the part of the
authoritarian regime to crisis conditions. In fact, it goes no further than the
presidential address of November 2008, when the term of the head of state and
parliament was extended (the preservation of the status quo). This was
accompanied by cosmetic alterations, such as providing one or two seats in
parliament to small parties, or reducing the threshold for party members from
50,000 to 40,000 people.

All this is quite understandable: the Kremlin
didn't go to the trouble of building those difficult political structures in
the 2000s only to knock them down with its own hands. It is much easier to
bring in temporary crisis managers from the qualified and loyal presidential
reserve list and to allow the liberals to let off steam at their
get-togethers. That way everything will remain
as it was, as soon as oil prices return to the longed-for three-figure mark.

But the longer and deeper the current economic
crisis, the more likely it is that the desire of the Russian elites to preserve
the status quo, without changing
anything in politics, will face serious obstacles.

Firstly, in a country where the primary feature
of state management, and its main goal, is extracting revenue, a recession is
bound to intensify the struggle between competitors. Recently, for example, the
Investigative Committee of the General Prosecutor's Office rapped the knuckles
of the Finance Ministry. This is just a prelude to new battles over
reallocating revenues, which may only become more serious as the situation
deteriorates.

Secondly, the deepening crisis puts on the
political agenda the issue of identifying those responsible for the crisis, and
punishing them publicly. It won't be enough to go on blaming
falling living standards and increasing unemployment on the hated "Yanks" alone.
No political regime could get away with that. Public opinion may need targets
outside the country, but it also needs internal culprits on which to focus its
profound dissatisfaction with the economic situation. For this reason the
competition among the elites in Russia is probably bound to increase, whatever
the leaders try and do to avoid this competition. To paraphrase the (sadly)
well-known saying of the Soviet era, we can assume a law of the intensification
of clan struggles during the period of transition to a crisis.

In democratic regimes elites compete through
the agency of free and fair elections - voters punish some parties and political
leaders, and support others. The most popular definition of democracy belongs
to the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter. He sees it as an institutional system in
which the problem of power is solved by the competition of the elites for
votes.

However, in undemocratic regimes, the rivalry
between elites (which can never be dealt with completely) is played out with entirely
different rules. The results are sometimes much more unfortunate than in a
democracy. Our country witnessed this rivalry (on the "bulldogs
fighting under a carpet" principle) during the Stalinist era. This led to
repression (the "Leningrad case"), and later, to the "palace coups" under
Khrushchev and Brezhnev. This competition finally came out into the open under
Gorbachev, when it became clear that winning in Russia's institutional system
did not depend on votes (Gorbachev himself was certainly not elected president
of the USSR in a competitive election).

So it is hardly surprising that dissatisfied
segments of the elite have not merely begun to "desert" to the opposition camp.
They have started to break up the very institutional system of the country that
hinders competition. We should bear in
mind that the consequence of the conflict of Soviet elites was the liquidation
of the status quo.

In the Putin era, open competition between
elites was taboo: those who tried to go against the flow learned a bitter
lesson from the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Until recently it has been
possible to resolve underlying rivalries by doling out revenues: some elite
factions "milked" Gazprom, and others Rosneft, while others were rewarded with
other resources. Additionally, rapid economic growth and the resulting high
level of mass support for the country's leaders made it more difficult for the
elites to compete for votes.

The temptation to formalise this status quo
into an institutional system for the long term proved too great: the principle
of elections was taken off the agenda, replaced what was effectively the
appointment of deputies, governors, and finally the president of the country.

But the crisis has revealed the problems
inherent in an authoritarian institutional system. It soon became clear that in
the conditions of an authoritarian regime in Russia there is:

no
effective system for replacing "weak links" in the machinery of government
(hence the urgent need for the
presidential "personnel reserve" to fill gubernatorial and ministerial
vacancies)

no
effective "feedback" system (in a country where the entire elite drives
foreign cars, the campaigns to support the national car industry only had
a negative effect)

no
effective means of resolving unavoidable conflicts between the elites (in
the eventuality that the president or primes minister were forced to
resign, the main institutions and mechanisms for running the country would
be unlikely to remain unchanged).

Thus, increased competition among the elites is
inevitable, under an unchanged institutional system. This may have far-reaching
consequences. Russia's authoritarian adjustment to the crisis may well mean
that after six months of recession a large number of Russian officials and
businessmen might follow Mikhail Khodorkovsky and find themselves working as
sewing machine operators in not so distant labour camps, having lost the battle
between competing factions to survive.

However, in actual fact, the deepening crisis
gives Russian leaders the opportunity of starting a political process that would lead to
democratisation. This could involve more than cosmetic gestures: it could mean
a fundamental reform of the political system.

It is only fair to say that the initiators'
chances of benefiting from such reforms are fairly slim. Such reforms are more
likely to be unsuccessful. But still, if these steps are taken today, there is
a chance that the Russian president (whose level of popular support is actually
very high) will remain "afloat".

Some of the present satellites can be
sacrificed, but only with the support of a large part of Russian society, and
of foreign countries that mean more for the future of Russia than its present
allies from Nicaragua to Belarus. The problem for them, and for the country as
a whole, is that the present regime's attempts to adjust its authoritarian model
to the economic crisis will make it even more difficult for Russia to emerge
from an already difficult economic situation. In short, by trying to avoid any
changes to the status quo in
politics, the leaders of the country are walking into a trap.

Of course, Russian elites - and indeed most
people - are used to going with the flow passively, and continuing to maintain
the status quo. It is so much easier than trying to
change the political system of the country during a recession. Countries that
choose to effect political change during an economic crisis, or are forced to
try to, may gain in the end. But they might lose too. However, those countries
whose main aim in the crisis is to preserve their political systems and resist
change at any price are probably doomed to bitter defeat.

It will soon become apparent whether Russia is
going through its own fault to end up in the "losing camp".